A Trump Makeover for Washington’s Old Post Office

In 1970, the government planned to tear down the landmark 1899 postal tower on Pennsylvania Avenue, but preservationists succeeded in saving it.Credit
Daniel Rosenbaum for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The landmark 1899 post office tower on Pennsylvania Avenue — the second-tallest building in Washington — looked out of place in the Federal Triangle of neoclassical government buildings constructed mostly in the 1930s.

To complete the Triangle in an architecturally compatible style, the government wanted to tear it down, leaving only the building’s clock tower to rise above its replacement in homage to the Richardsonian Romanesque structure that would be no more.

The 1970 plan gave rise to Don’t Tear It Down, an organization (now the D.C. Preservation League) that successfully fought the demolition. Yet efforts to reuse the old building as offices for other federal agencies, with a ground-floor food court pavilion below the soaring nine-story atrium, also failed. The Old Post Office, a preservationist success, was a governmental flop, a federal white elephant saved from the wrecking ball — but for what?

In 2011, the General Services Administration, which owns and manages federal properties, invited interested parties to consider the prospects. More than 80 initially showed interest. Ultimately, 10 firms made formal proposals.

Last August, the agency signed a 60-year lease with the Trump Organization to renovate and convert the iconic building into a luxury hotel. Trump formally takes possession on Saturday, allowing work to begin on a $200 million makeover. The deal also includes two 20-year lease renewal options.

According to Donald J. Trump, chairman and president of the Trump Organization, the two-year project is to be completed in time for the 2017 presidential inaugural parade, which will pass right in front en route from the Capitol to the White House. (A place occupied now by a frequent target of Mr. Trump’s barbs — President Obama.)

“It’s very unusual to have that frontage on such an unusual thoroughfare,” Mr. Trump said. “We’re looking to make that one of the great hotels of the world.”

Photo

The $200 million renovation will include 271 guest rooms. The Trump Organization has a 60-year lease with the General Services Administration.Credit
Hirsch Bedner Associates

The Old Post Office was constructed before Congress imposed height limitations in the District of Columbia in 1910. The building is 315 feet high, exceeded only by the 329-foot-tall Basilica of the National Shrine of Immaculate Conception. The city’s tallest building, at 555 feet, is the Washington Monument, another landmark that juts above the city’s low skyline.

“It has such incredible potential and has been totally underutilized,” enthused Ivanka Trump, executive vice president for development and acquisitions for the Trump Organization and Mr. Trump’s daughter, who is perhaps better known for her lines of women’s jewelry, shoes and handbags.

“You just couldn’t build something like this today,” she said, “having a nine-story glass-top atrium, having solid granite turrets, the level of detail carved into the stone. There is unbelievable wainscoting detail and incredibly intricate molding.”

Ms. Trump, who attended Georgetown University and graduated from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, has been intimately involved in planning the interior renovation of what will formally be known as Trump International Hotel, the Old Post Office Building. The project will also incorporate an adjacent annex built in the 1980s, to include a 13,000-square-foot ballroom and 36,000 square feet of meeting space.

The main building will have 271 rooms — prices to be determined — including two “presidential” suites in the former postmaster general’s office, 3,600 and 5,000 square feet in size.

The hotel rooms “will be the largest of any of the rooms in D.C.,” Mr. Trump said. “We have on average 16-foot ceilings — unheard-of in a hotel — and soaring double-bay windows. You look at these four-to-five-feet-thick granite walls. Today, you couldn’t even buy a piece of it. When the U.S. was so rich, this is the way they would build them.”

While the Trump hotel portfolio numbers nine at the moment, the addition of hotels in Vancouver, Rio de Janeiro and the Old Post Office will bring the number to 12 by 2016. The Old Post Office will include street-level restaurants, a cafe and a library. Its atrium is to have a fitness center, the 4,000-square-foot Mar-a-Lago spa by Ivanka Trump, and meeting space.

“It’s a beautiful, historic, iconic building right on America’s Main Street,” said Dan M. Tangherlini, administrator of the General Services Administration. “But the truth is, it’s not useful as an office building in the 21st century. It was best to find a private sector partner to redevelop and put it to better economic use.”

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A rendering of the 13,000-square-foot Grand Ballroom of Trump International Hotel, which will occupy the Old Post Office Building and an adjacent annex.Credit
Hirsch Bedner Associates

Why Trump? Mr. Tangherlini, who became the agency’s acting administrator in April 2012 and administrator last July, said, “It was a combination of the viability of the business plan, the quality of the commitment to preserving the asset and a sense that this was the best deal on the table for the American taxpayer.”

The Trump Organization has been involved in other renovations of historic properties, including the Hotel Delmonico in Manhattan and the former Mar-A-Lago estate of Marjorie Merriweather Post in Palm Beach. The lease with the G.S.A. for the Old Post Office calls for Trump to pay the government $3 million a year in rent from the hotel’s opening date, with additional payments tied to the Consumer Price Index.

In addition, Trump will be paying “possessory interest” taxes to the District of Columbia. Trump has also applied to the Internal Revenue Service for a 20 percent federal preservation tax credit on money spent on the renovation.

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(The “possessory interest” tax is in lieu of property tax, since the building will continue to be federally owned and therefore exempted from Washington property taxes. This is something the district created in 2000 to obtain money from private entities conducting business on tax-exempt government-owned properties. This tax is calculated at the same rate as Washington’s commercial property tax based on assessed value. At this time, it is difficult to say what that would be.)

Uniquely, Trump will be mostly investing its own equity in the project, rather than relying primarily on outside financing. “Much of it will be cash up front,” Mr. Trump said.

After the hotel’s grand reopening, the National Park Service, which has had a small presence at the building, will continue to maintain a modest museum about the structure and to take tourists on an elevator to its 270-foot high observation deck for sweeping views of the nation’s capital.

As if restoring the Old Post Office were not enough, the Trumps also have their eyes on the Federal Bureau of Investigation building a block away, on the opposite side of Pennsylvania Avenue. The General Services Administration is looking to turn over the Brutalist building to a developer in return for land elsewhere in the area on which to build a new F.B.I. headquarters.

“We’ve been looking at that closely,” Ms. Trump said. “Our first priority is the Old Post Office, but there is tremendous potential with the F.B.I.”

Correction: May 31, 2014

An article on Wednesday, about the renovation of a landmark postal tower in Washington, D.C., attributed an erroneous distinction to the Washington Monument. While the monument, at 555 feet, is the tallest building in Washington, it is not the tallest structure. (That distinction belongs to the Hughes Memorial Tower, a radio tower, at 761 feet.)

A version of this article appears in print on May 28, 2014, on Page B6 of the New York edition with the headline: A Trump Makeover for Washington’s Old Post Office. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe